Toyota Wants To Make Sure You Never Lose Anything Under A Car Seat Ever Again

If you have spent any significant amount of time in a car, you have almost certainly dropped something into the gap between the front seat and centre console.

Typically, retrieving said item -- spare change; an important business card; your car key (yup, we've done that) -- very nearly requires removing the the seat from the car, but Toyota wants to make it easier with a device for which it recently filed a patent with the U.S. trademark office.

Toyota calls its latest invention an "under seat capture device," which comprises a chute below the seat/console gap, and a platform or container equipped with a sensor to instruct it to tip up to slide your lost object to a tray under the leading edge of the seat, where you'll reach down to collect it.

As usual, the patent's technical description is hilariously detailed (have a look at it here), but we're not laughing, because we think this is an idea long overdue.